The long pending plan of the national carrier, Air India to fly into Tel Aviv has finally been approved. National carrier Air India will be starting its much anticipated Delhi-Tel Aviv flights from March 20 this year. The thrice-weekly flight will operate on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. AI-139 will depart from Delhi at 18.00 hours and arrive in Tel Aviv at 21.45 hours (local time). Whereas, AI-140 will depart from Tel Aviv at 23.15 hours and arrive in Delhi at 10.00 hours.
The airline had already completed plans to commence Delhi – Tel Aviv flights but was denied by countries from which the plan was going to fly over, thus disrupting their plans. However this move is said to come after the recent visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to India giving impetus to this decision. This is a welcome initiative to further boost trade and tourism ties between both the countries.
Also, when it comes to tourism, for the second consecutive year, Israel has broken its tourism record of Indian arrivals reaching an all-time high of 31 per cent growth from January to December, 2017 with around 60,000 Indian tourists visiting the country in 2017. This marks a whopping growth of 48 per cent in the last two years, per the statistics released by Israel Ministry of Tourism (IMOT).
Speaking about the positive growth, Hassan Madah, director, Israel Ministry of Tourism India & Philippines said, “2017 has been outstanding and by far the best year for Israel tourism in India and worldwide. By October, 2017 we already saw 49,000 Indians arrive in Israel, breaking previous records, and we were positive to close the year with 60,000 travellers to Israel from India. With over 20 million outbound tourists a year, India has been an important market for us and I am pleased to say that we have witnessed constant growth in the arrivals from the Indian market over the last four years.”
Hopefully, with the Air India flights to Tel Aviv, this number will grow at an increasing rate.